


Not if I see you first

by pollitt



Series: I Ran All the Way Home [1]
Category: Stand By Me (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollitt/pseuds/pollitt
Summary: It's the eve of publication. The story of their past is printed and bound between the covers of a book, ready to be shared with the world, and their future is on pages yet-to-be-written. And the present, in the early light of morning, Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance sit and watch the sunrise.(Now including Gordie's Author's Notes)
Relationships: Chris Chambers/Gordie LaChance
Series: I Ran All the Way Home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636141
Comments: 28
Kudos: 79
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Highsmith (quimtessence)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Highsmith/quimtessence! I hope you enjoy this story. This is one of my oldest favorite movies, and was delighted to have the opportunity to write this for you (especially with the prompt of a fix-it for Chris's fate <3) 
> 
> Thank you to my beta, dogeared, for always having the red pen at the ready!

Some nights, Chris still wakes up in a cold sweat, the image of Ray Brower’s dead body floating in his sight like a grotesque aftervision.

The first few years after that summer, it had been an almost weekly occurrence. He’d jolt awake, his heart racing and his breathing shallow as he forced himself to remember it was all over and he was home (usually) and safe (mostly). Sometimes he wasn’t alone, and those nights, when a pair of knowing eyes or a comforting hand on his shoulder greeted him, Chris would go back to sleep, knowing with Gordie within reach, they were safe.

The body didn’t haunt him as much over the next 30 years, only appearing sometimes when he was stressed -- finals, studying for the bar, or when he had a new client who had the odds stacked against them but still had that spark of defiant hope within them that reminded him of himself, or of Gordie. Sometimes he woke up alone. Sometimes he didn’t. And when he didn’t, it became rarer that his partner would know what had happened, and he never tried to explain.

But in the last couple of years, when it happens and Chris sits up in bed, his pulse racing, the sleepy eyes that open are once again Gordie’s, and it’s his knowing and comforting and warm hands that urge Chris back down onto the bed. Their bed.

“Do you think it’s because of the book?” Gordie asks him one morning when going back to sleep seems like a lost cause. The hair on his head is pointing in a hundred different directions, and the hair on his face has officially moved on from scruff to something that could be described as a beard.

“You mean the one that you wrote about how we found Brower’s body? That you’ve been working on for years and are about to go on a book tour for? No, it’s not related at all,” Chris says, rolling his eyes.

“Ass,” Gordie says, kissing him.

Chris raises his eyebrow at Gordie and smiles. It’s not high romance--Denny, Gordie’s son, calls it weird, but the kid is 16 and any amount of adult affection is considered “weird” in a teenager’s mind--but it’s them.

This isn’t the life Chris ever thought he’d have. Truth be told, he never really had a clear picture of what his future life could possibly look like, and so the fact that he is a successful lawyer would be as unbelievable to his 12-year-old self as the fact that, somehow, he and Gordie are actually together. (Chris is never going to be best friends with Gordie’s ex, Lee, but she’d been true to her word when she’d said the only person she’d accept Gordie leaving her for was Chris. Not that Gordie had done that—they were already divorced by the time Chris woke up in an ICU with a knife wound to his neck and Gordie demanding to be included on the visitors list. Chris thinks about that scar as a reminder of second chances.)

\----- 

It’s still early, the sky is still half in darkness as Chris walks outside and sits down on the deck stairs to watch the sunrise.

“You’re not upset about the book, are you?” Gordie asks, joining him outside and handing him a mug of coffee. “I know you said you didn’t mind that I wrote it. But were you just saying that?”

Gordie’s agent had called to let him know the book had sold to a publisher the same day they moved into their house. They’d celebrated with cheap champagne and getting as naked as possible as quickly as possible. That night Gordie gave Chris a printout of the manuscript to read.

“When have I ever done that? Telling you what to do has never been a problem for me. This is who you are, Gordie. You’re a writer. You were meant to write. And it’s not like you’re pulling some Kitty Kelly shit. This isn’t some shocking tell-all… although your old man might disagree. Besides, it’s not my balls that leeches had for lunch.”

Gordie laughs as he sits down on the step next to Chris. “Yeah, but people are going to read it, and they’re going to know what happened, and they’re going to ask questions. About the story. About us.”

“Like how am I still alive. You killed me off on the last page. It’s a great ending, don’t get me wrong, but I still sleep with one eye open, you know.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Gordie says with a manufactured sigh. It’s a well-trod conversation by now and comfortable in a way that an old t-shirt fits. “Things are going to change.”

“No shit.” Chris laughs. As if finding a dead body when he was 12 years old, proving everyone wrong and actually going to college, to law school, becoming a lawyer, surviving any number of things that should have killed him, and falling back in love with Gordie Lachance didn’t change--didn’t somehow at least somewhat upend--his life a hundred times over. “About time the rest of the world found out how talented you are. And everything else? I’m not ashamed. Not of me, not of you, and not of us.”

A stray patch of grey in Gordie’s beard catches the light, and the last shadows of dawn deepen the worry lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. But then he smiles and all those years melt away, and Chris feels like he’s fucking fifteen years old and all he can think about is kissing him. So he does, and it’s better now than it was then. They know who they are now, and whatever happens next, they’ll figure it out.

“I told you I was going to look out for you. That’s never changed and it never will change. You’re stuck with me, Lachance,” Chris says, wrapping his arm around Gordie’s shoulder.

“Good,” Gordie says, leaning against Chris’s side, his head resting on Chris’s shoulder.

The story of their past is printed and bound between the covers of a book, ready to be shared with the world, and their future is on pages yet-to-be-written. And in their present, in the early light of morning, Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance sit and watch the sunrise, together.


	2. Author's Notes, by Gordie Lachance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Preface and Author's Note from the first edition of Gordon Lachance's debut novel, _I Ran All the Way Home_. 
> 
> When Gordie's author copies arrive at the house, he lets Chris read the Author Note for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, I wasn't done yet with Chris and Gordie. They wanted more of their story told, and who am I to argue.

**Preface**

It may go without saying, but not all of this is 100% true. I didn’t change names and facts to protect the innocent, but rather because it made for a good story. That’s why this book is in the fiction section.

I’m not going to spoil it and explain. Not yet. But if you’re reading this, if you make it to the end, then you might learn something. But I’m not going to make it that easy for you.

\-----

**Author’s Note**

This book exists because of an overheard conversation in the summer of 1959, and a misreported newspaper article 26 years later.

That first part is the story you just finished reading, unless you skipped straight to the end, and if that’s the case, for chrissakes go back and read the book. I told you I wasn’t going to make it easy for you.

And about that second part? Chalk that one up to _The Oregonian_ ’s early edition deadlines.

When I saw the article about Chris being killed trying to break up a fight in a restaurant, my world tilted off of its axis, and things I hadn’t thought about in years hit me like a train. I knew I had to write about the summer I was 12 and my three friends and I found a dead body. You know those cartoons where a lightbulb goes off over a character's head and they start typing away, finished pages flying in the air? The first draft of this story wasn’t that far off.

Chris had always joked that if I was hard up enough, I’d write about that summer. I thought he’d find it fitting that him dying brought this story to life.

But here’s the thing. Just like how not everything I wrote was exactly what happened that summer, what the paper reported happening in that restaurant wasn’t exactly true either.

Chris didn’t die.

If you want to get technical, his heart did stop briefly, but to borrow a line from Twain, the report of his death was an exaggeration. But by the time I saw the correction a few days later, the story was already in progress, and it’s a better story ending the way it does.

The book might be better, I keep telling Chris, but my life wouldn’t be.

So before I get too sappy, let me get some thanks out of the way.

To my editor, J.D., who makes sure the sentences make sense and throws in the commas where they should be and pulls them out like a splinter when they’re where they don’t belong. And to P, who was always there to bounce ideas off of and offer up the right question at the right time. If you enjoy reading what I wrote, part of that credit goes to those two.

To my agent, or as I like to call him, “The King,” who got this story out there. I wouldn’t be here without you. Thanks.

To my parents, who never really got me, this probably won’t help. But it might.

Vern and Teddy. You were two of the best friends a guy could have.

To Ace, I hope you pick this up in your prison library. If you ever learned how to read.

Denny Lachance, the teenager who waited semi-patiently as I wrote this, I’m sorry for all the hours of beach time you missed because I just had to write one more sentence/scene/page. But maybe as a consolation this book will pay for your college. Or at least buy you whatever video games you want. And to the original Denny, the best big brother a guy like me could ask for and who always believed in me. I miss you every goddamn day.

To Lee, thank you for being the mother of our son and for knowing what would happen before I did.

And last, but not least, to Chris. While you say you sleep with one eye open because I killed you here, you know I will never stop thanking you for living. Nothing then or now would be here without you. You’ve probably read this story enough times to make you want to vomit, but you always read it one more time to make sure I got it right. I can do anything as long as you’re with me. First, last, and everything in between.

Okay, one more. To those of you who are reading this -- the writers, the quiet kids, the loud ones, the underestimated ones, the weird ones -- thank you. You’re not alone. Give me some skin.  
  


_Eugene, Oregon_

\---------

“Gordie,” Chris says quietly as he finishes reading and closes the book. Gordie’s black and white author photo smiles up at him from the back of the dust jacket.

“Too much?” Gordie asks, the worry line between his eyebrows creasing.

“You goddamn sap.” Chris cradles Gordie’s face in his hands and kisses him, slowly and repeatedly. “It’s perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it took more time for me to figure out the name of Gordie's novel than it took to write the actual story/scene. The title is from The Impala's song "Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)" which is sung briefly in the tree house at the beginning of the movie. Poor Vern just wanted to finish his story, sincerely. 
> 
> Thank you to dogeared for her beta, and Data for the encouragement. And thank you to Gordie for letting me put that in his acknowledgements :)

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing but love and respect to Richard Dreyfuss, but as I wrote this, Gordie’s follicular future and appearance was 110% 40-something Wil Wheaton :)
> 
> I went with the imdb/movie credits spelling of Gordie's last name. Hence that first lowercase c in Lachance


End file.
